


Really That Damaged

by nellywrites



Category: Constantine (TV), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Canon Related, Casual Sex, Episode Tag, F/M, Pillow Talk, disaster bisexuals, hellcanary, or their version of it anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-29 18:11:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13932504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nellywrites/pseuds/nellywrites
Summary: In which John and Sara bond over their respective dark pasts, and then they have sex. Or what happened in canon, except with better timing. Episode tag/rewrite for LOT 3x10 'Daddy Darhkest'. [No Leo Snarts were almost lobotomized in the making of this fic]





	Really That Damaged

**Author's Note:**

> As the summary says, this is a redux of episode 10. I've been crackshipping John and Sara for a long time and, naturally, was thrilled we got to see their dynamic play out on screen. I thought their connection felt real and was (mostly) earned, but the timing for their hookup was unfortunate. So, this happened. I'd love to get your thoughts on this. I feel really comfortable writing Sara, but I'm still finding my John voice. I hope you like it!

_The line was always crossed in me_  
_And maybe I'm too far to reach_  
_But what's inside of you's the same as me_

||

 

“Are you scared?” Sara says, voice soft in a whisper because she’s aware that the question is probably the most personal and intimate she can ask.

John lifts the corner of his mouth in a half smile that betrays his truth; a crack in his shield of arrogance.

“Well, I’m not in any hurry to get to the finish line, I’ll say that.”

It still feels strange to her to think of Heaven and Hell as real places. Too esoteric, even for one who’s experienced death and resurrection.

“Are you?” he asks and she thinks about it for a moment.

For Sara, death had been a lonely, loveless void. She doesn’t know where she went, after. She doesn’t think it was heaven. She doesn’t remember rest or relief.

“I used to be,” she says “Though, these days it’s the living that feels scarier.”

 

* * *

  
“Feels like the mother of all hangovers, don't it?” John says, and Sara nods because she has no other language to describe the experience. The reality is that demonic possession feels like nothing she’s ever been through before.

She lets herself fall to the floor, thankful for the support of the wall behind her. One less dark space in the room to worry about. She can't shake the feeling that the demon is still watching her, still perched somewhere over her shoulder waiting for the opportunity to infect her with his malice again. Goosebumps prickle all down her back. Her mouth tastes like metal. Her skin feels singed. Her chest aches with the pain of phantom arrows.

But worse, there’s a familiar itch beneath her skin, a need sinister and worrying, like a whisper behind her ears urging her to take, take, take. Her pulse pounds so heavy and so loud it feels as though John can hear it, and the memory of the demon’s voice inside her head makes her shiver anew. _They can’t reach you, only I can_. She feels herself blurring at the seam and only John’s presence at her side anchors her.

“I thought this was all over,” she confesses, “the bloodlust, the fight for my soul. All the crap I’ve had to endure.” Spilling her guts to the man who saved her soul was not how she thought this day would go.

“There’s always something else to endure,” he says.

He sounds so exhausted. She recognizes that weariness; she hears it in her own voice.

Sara shakes her own troubles aside for a second and turns to look at him. It’s like looking into a mirror, he looks so haunted. She listens as he tells the story of the little girl named Astra and the cursed trip to Newcastle that ruined so many lives and damned John’s soul to hell. The details are terrifying, and John’s voice shakes as he relays them, all semblance of arrogance dropped in favor of a moment of real vulnerability. But she’s grateful for his honesty; it makes her feel less naked.

“Some might say you should forgive yourself,” she tells him, repeating words she's heard so many times before and he lets out a gruff, humourless chuckle.

“Some, eh? But not you.”

Sara understands the practical futility of atonement. Nothing she does will ever undo her past deeds, just as saving Nora’s soul from Mallus won’t pull Astra back from hell.

“Some things don’t deserve forgiveness,” she says.

“You speak of your own sins,” he says, though he doesn’t refute her statement.

Sometimes she pretends she doesn’t know how many lives have been snuffed out by her hands, but she remembers each one. They all weigh so heavy on her conscience, even the ones who deserved it. Keeping score of her good deeds doesn’t really do much to alleviate it. She suspects it’s the same for John. His over-confidence is an affectation for his guilt. She knows because she plays that role, too.

“Well, if we could forgive ourselves,” he continues, “then who would be left to save the likes of poor Nora?”

John pushes himself off the wall and she lets him pull her to her feet. They’re almost nose to nose and she has no choice but to stare up into his dark eyes. He’s got a certain magnetism to him that she can’t help but be pulled by. Thea had once called him a specific kind of yummy. He’s a pain in the ass, but Sara can see the appeal.

She sees his hands shuffle around and produce a card out of thin air. Her breath catches at the sight of it, heart full of longing for her sister. There are two birds on the card: one white, one black. Her past. Her present. The future she’s fighting so hard for.

“It’s a little reminder that you’re a survivor,” John tells her, “strong enough to keep even the most powerful demons at bay.”

It might be a line but she understands the message: our strengths are the products of our past. The man rescued her soul from the underrealm and she just saw him go toe to toe with a demon, but this cheap parlour trick charms her more than anything. She takes the card from his hands and looks up at his face, her eyes drawn to the haughty curl of his mouth. He is so close she can smell the cigarettes on his breath. He moves closer still and her pulse spikes up again, if for different reasons this time. When was the last time a man made her feel this unbalanced?

“Say, a laundry room in a mental asylum in 1969 might not be the worst place to be stuck,” he says.

And it'd be so easy to pull him forward and take what he’s offering, swallow his breath right into her lungs, fill them up with damnation. She's spent so long trying to rise above the darkness, trying to be something other than-- what was it she’d said to Leo? The kind of girl you take to an exorcism. It’s exhausting.

She’s still rattled and anxious and wants nothing more than to lose herself in the touch of someone equally damaged, someone who has seen the thing the Pit spat out and doesn’t judge it because he’s got his own demons tugging on his coattails.

She leans in just enough to brush her lips against his before the guilt kicks in and the weight of responsibility bears down on her shoulders. She’s a leader now, a Captain, and people are depending on her. A mid-mission tryst with an exorcist is not the kind of thing she should be doing, no matter how much she burns for it.

With a heavy sigh, she pulls back, and says, “We should go find Leo.”

 

* * *

 

“I told you, I’m fine. Now will you quit it?” Sara insists as John sprays her with holy water for what feels like the tenth time since they made a frantic return to the Waverider after their stint in 1969. She’d made the crew leave them alone in the medbay after reassuring them too that yes, she was okay.

“That was bloody stupid thing we did back there,” he says, his hands on his hips and his face all serious with reprimand.

She tries not to laugh, because he’s right, it was stupid and they could’ve died, but they didn’t, and it worked and they’re here in the Waverider, standing so close to each other she only has to lean forward a step to touch her forehead to his chest, where she can feel the rumbling of his own laughter.

“Stupid is sort of our specialty,” she says as her laughter trails off.

“You managed to summon a demon of the highest order and you didn’t succumb. Not even I have that kind of juice.”

“Yeah, well, I’m kinda amazing.”

“Now don’t be putting on airs, sweetheart, it’s unbecoming.”

He’s looking at her like he did in the laundry room, dark eyes full of lust and danger. Except now the mission is over and she doesn’t have to be Captain Lance anymore. She can just be Sara. And Sara wants to continue on where they left off.

“Are you sure you feel alright there?” he says, hand poised to douse her again.

Maybe the fact that he sounds so dubious should offend her, or maybe even scare her, but she’s still riding high on adrenaline. She can feel the magic coursing electric through her. She feels powerful, invincible, like she can take on the whole world.

“Actually, there is something,” she says as she takes the vial of holy water from him and steps right into his personal space.

John’s head tilts to one side, an eyebrow comes up in question, and then he smirks.

“The best kind of high, innit?”

“I can think of something better,” she says with a shrug.

“Is that so?”

“You have no idea,” she says and John practically growls as he finally comes at her.

He slams her against the walls of the Waverider, careful to hold on to the back of her head to cushion the impact. John's kiss is uncompromising, almost violent. It’s sloppy, wet from the get go. Sara grabs on to his hips and squirms against him, letting herself enjoy the novelty of someone matching her passion. She breaks the kiss to catch her breath and then she’s on him again, biting at the joint between ear and neck.

He smells like smoke and sulphur: black magic and hellfire. Damned, he’d said.

She feels her own darkness come alive, the bloodlust warming her from inside and for the first time, she’s not afraid of it. Not with him. It is part of her like his damnation is part of him. She lets it take over. She’s already sweating in her clothes, aching between her legs. All her nerves singing with desire.

“You got a bed here, luv?” he says, panting into her mouth, and she hauls him by the lapels of his coat and walks backwards into the hallway.

 

 

The doors to her quarters shut with a woosh and they waste no time disposing each other of their clothes in between hungry kisses, and then, finally, his hands are on her bare skin. John grabs her by the hips and walks them toward her bed. He pushes her down and she lets herself fall, content, for the moment, in letting him think he’s got control. He crawls over her body until they’re aligned hip to hip.

“How ‘bout I show you a magic trick?”

Sara smiles and then expertly flips them over until she’s on top, straddling his hips. She pins his wrists to the bed and he squirms.

“Oh, sweetheart, you’re gonna be a lot of fun.”

“John?” she says, walking on her knees until she’s hovering right over his face.

He smirks from between her legs, all lust and arrogance. The look in his eyes promises trouble. His big hands wrap around her hips and he rubs his stubbled cheeks across the soft insides of her thighs. When she shivers he laughs throatily.

“Shut up and put that smart mouth of yours to good use.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” he says and then his mouth is on her cunt.

 

 

There are no words exchanged as they kiss and bite and suck, and grip and grind, hips slamming together feeling for that perfect fit. She revels in the messiness of their fucking, the near selfish way they work each other’s bodies for pleasure. Men don’t always know what to do with her intensity, they feel threatened by it, but John seems to encourage her to go harder, to lose grip on her hard-fought-for control. It’s primal and heady, the way John obviously enjoys himself as much as she does. So much that she lets him flip them over until she’s flat on her back with her legs wrapped around his waist.

The burn of the blood lust is still there, smarting under her skin. But it doesn’t scare her. The satisfied grin on John’s face approximates a snarl and she lets the high of his pleasure carry her over the edge. Then, she sinks her teeth into the curve of his shoulder and bites down hard until his hips stutter and he comes inside her.

After the sex, he smacks a sloppy kiss on the corner of her mouth, and pants into her neck for a minute before he extricates himself from the cradle of her hips, rolls over and passes out face down on the mattress.

Typical.

She lays there, sated and sore, breath still erratic, blood crying out for vengeance. She closes her eyes and concentrates on her breathing, like Ra’s al Ghul taught her. She clears her mind of all thoughts until her hands stop shaking.

She turns to look at her companion. John’s still passed out. The sight of him brings a smug smile to her face. She ruffles his sweaty hair and he comes awake with a groan.

“I’ll be right back,” she says.

She picks up John’s coat from the heap of clothes on the floor, puts it on like a robe and goes in search of booze. When she comes back with a bottle of Rip’s best whiskey, she finds John sitting up in bed, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, arguing with Gideon over the Waverider’s non-smoking policy.

He looks her up and down.

“Well, fuck me.”

Sara raises an eyebrow and says, “I don’t think you can handle me a second round.”

For a second, she sees the challenge in his eyes, like he’s going to call her out on her bluff, but he sinks into the mattress and groans instead.

“You’re not wrong about that, love. Summoning and holding a demon like Mallus really takes it out on a guy. Now, what’s that you got there?”

“Well, you prescribed a gin and tonic, but I was thinking, maybe a shot of whiskey will do.”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether or not you’re gonna share.”

Sara grins and lets his coat fall to the floor at her feet. She crawls back into the narrow bed and settles next to him. He takes the bottle from her and she steals the cigarette from his mouth. He takes a drink, straight from the bottle.

“Now, that really hits the spot.”

“Rip always did have excellent taste,” she agrees and passes back the cigarette.

“The other brit in a trenchcoat, right?”

“This ship used to be his. He tried to warn us, about Mallus, but we didn’t believe him. I guess he showed us, huh?”

“Nasty demon, that one. We got away with what we did today, but let’s not go trying it again. The bastard’s strong and he doesn’t fear much. That’s how I failed, with Astra. I couldn’t admit I was way in over my head.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“Just make sure you really know what you’re doing before you do it, all right?”

“Is that John Constantine showing concern for dear old me?”

He rolls his eyes at her and blows smoke in her face.

“I just don’t wanna be blamed for your fuck ups, that’s all,” he says, and she laughs.

She finds it easy to talk to him, freeing. He’s not depending on her or waiting on her orders, or lying to her. With him, in this moment, she can just be Sara, whoever that is.

“How’d you find me really? I know you said something about some magic mumbo jumbo, but how you do even attune something to my ‘specific energy?’”

“Your soul. They’re like fingerprints, souls. No two alike. I happen to be very familiar with yours.”

If they were different people, that would have almost sounded romantic.

It’s strange to think about her soul as something real instead of metaphorical. But he’s seen it, guided it back to the feral vessel that was her body. He knows the shape of it like he’s just learned the shape of her body.

“Today I took a demon into my body so we could time travel out of 1969 via a spell, but for some reason, you talking about my soul like that is weirder to me.”

John puts his cigarette out on her bedside table. He sits crossed-legged on the bed and tells her to do the same. He grabs on to her forearm, fingers wrapping around her elbow, and she mimics the hold on his arm. He mutters an incantation under his breath and then she feels it, a sudden rush of energy all around and inside of her. It feels feisty, irreverent and playful but there’s a foreboding darkness surrounding it.

He lets go and the energy leaves her as swiftly as it entered her.

“That was you,” she says, breathless.

“New trick I picked up from a friend. You’d like her. You remind me of her, actually.”

The fondness in his voice makes Sara smile.

“I'm sorry we couldn't save Nora,” she says.

“So am I.”

“There might still be hope for grown Nora. Once we defeat Mallus, who knows?”

“Some souls don’t get to be saved.”

“I saw her, you know, when I was inside Mallus’ realm. Grown up Nora almost killed me a few weeks ago, but seeing her like that? She’s just a kid. It’s not her fault she’s her father’s daughter.”

“Right wanker he is.”

“You know him?”

“You could say that.”

“He killed my sister.”

John lets out a deep sigh.

‘I’m real sorry to hear that. I told Queen to get out while he still could. Stubborn bastard wouldn't listen.”

Sara rearranges herself until she’s leaning against the wall behind the bed. She grabs the bottle of whiskey and takes another drink.

“He’s going to come for me again, isn’t he?”

John clicks his tongue and sighs.

“It’s likely, yeah.”

“What if I’m not strong enough to hold him back without you helping me?”

“I meant what I said in that laundry room, Sara. Your fear, your pain, your guilt, they all mean something. They got you here. Trust that. Trust yourself.”

“I’m not a good person, John,” she says.

“That makes two of us, love.”

“I try, so hard, but it's a choice I have to continue to make, every single day. And everyone expects me to be perfect all the time, to have all the answers, and I’m tired.”

“Some days it’s bloody hard. People like us, all the darkness we’ve seen, we see the world for what it really is. And we know the right thing isn’t always the good thing. It takes a special kind of strength to bear that, so give yourself a little credit.”

“It gets lonely, though.”

John rolls over on the bed and straddles her body. He tucks an errant curl behind her ear, looking at her through eyes that hold so many regrets. The two of them give meaning to the word haunted.

“You’re not lonely now, are you?” he says.

The words themselves may sound like a pick up line when they’re still naked on her bed, but she feels like something real just happened between them. Not real in the sense of any permanence, or even romance. But John made her feel seen and understood in a way she hasn’t felt since Oliver and that means more to her than she can articulate to him in words, so she grabs his face between her hands and kisses him in answer.

 

* * *

 

There are parts of Sara’s past that remain amorphous and unnameable, even to herself. Like that unspeakable period where she walked undead. She remembers what her body did, but in the way one recalls a story told by someone else; an acquired memory, instead of an experienced one.

The guilt of the bloodlust, though, that has always felt decidedly her own.

Laurel asked her once, what it’d felt like to be a soulless body. Sara told her it was a little like standing behind of a glass window at night, looking out into the darkness while your reflection looks right back at you. If you unfocus your eyes after long enough, the barrier disappears and you find yourself existing somewhere in between _here_ and _there_. Now imagine a room full of those glass windows.

When John asks, though, she doesn’t say that. She tells the truth. She says, “It felt like drowning.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed my writing, I have a couple of fics in the works for this pairing: an au that explores the period between Sara leaving Star City after her resurrection and joining the Legends; and the band!au, obviously. Watch this space!


End file.
